


Knowns and Variables

by DaughterOfTheWest



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A journey through the bowels of Dirk Strider's brain, Act Six, M/M, Oneshot, Rated T for references to boners, Seagull tastes like shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 08:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfTheWest/pseuds/DaughterOfTheWest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk either knows something or he doesn't. He keeps tabs on what goes in which category-- </p><p>So where does he put his massive crush on Jake English?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knowns and Variables

You know a lot of things.  
  
You know that you can't drink saltwater or you'll die, so you have to filter it. You know that you can do this by letting the water in the collection containers evaporate so the salt is left behind. You know that seagull tastes best when cooked over a medium-high flame and eaten with your eyes closed. A little paprika doesn't hurt, either. You know how to catch them and how to flay and cook fish of all kinds, how to live off of nothing but what you can hunt yourself because what the hell else is out here to eat?  
  
You know how to articulate the joints on an android to replicate the natural balance of a human walk. You know that sitting at a worktable soldering metal is relaxing, and you know that the algorithms for a complex AI take approximately three weeks of your undivided attention to write up. You know how to teach a machine speech, how to teach it to strife with speed and accuracy, how to teach it to begin to act like a real human being, and how to build a mind that is capable of learning these things in the first place.  
  
You know how to pretend that this robot is anything other than an artificial mind of your own creation.  
  
You know that an autoresponder is the closest thing you have to real, human companionship. You know that your Internet friends are the second-closest thing you have, and you know that using the term "closest" to describe people who are miles and centuries away from you has the bitter tang of irony attached. You also know that irony makes up most of your life. You are the _prince_ of irony.  
  
You know (you are so acutely aware it _hurts_ ) that you have a boner the size of Godzilla and Mothra's abhorrent love child for your best bro, that dopey-ass jungle boy from another era, another world, a million miles across the sea. You know that he's an idiot and you're a coward and you know that you would never admit it, just like you know he'll never pick up on your crush unless you say something so you also know that you're at an indefinite standstill.  
  
You know that you'll spend 90% of all of your conversations with him kicking yourself for not having the balls to do anything about it, for being so goddamn awkward, for getting yourself into this mess in the first place. You know that you are good at compartmentalizing these things. You know that Jake English, the idiot savant of guns and adventuring, has a way of making grand escapes out of his little compartment in your mind like the Indiana jones ripoff he is, especially when you're alone at night and frustrated as all hell and god damn why does he have to be so hot. You know that the tightness in your boxers agrees.  
  
You know that if you don’t get your friends into the game safely, you’re all as good as dead. You know that you are the sole hope for this happening. You know how to ride the chaos-- the wave of entropy that is tearing apart your world and will tear apart your friends if you’re not careful-- how to move with the flow of the plan to make things go the way you want them to, the way they _need_ to, the way you guide the hands of so many puppets to keep everyone alive and safe.  
  
You know that cutting off your own head is a risk. You also know that the risk does not mean that it’s a variable. You know it will be okay. You know that Jake will follow through. You know. You know. You _know_ \--  
  
Fuck you hope this works.  
  
You know that subsequently watching your man-crush play tonsil-hockey with your own severed head should feel weirder than it does, because you’re actually feeling validated in your affections. You know that this is fucked up. You know that there are a lot of things you could be diagnosed with if there was a copy of the DSMV-IV left in the universe. Luckily, you also know that there isn’t one.  
  
It hits you, standing in the meta-space that spawns worlds, that this is the first time in a long time that you _don’t_ know what to do. You don’t know where to go or what your life is going to look like now that you aren’t stranded in indefinite solitary confinement. You don’t know what to say to that stupidly perfect buck-toothed Tarzan who’s looking at you like you’re a crazy asshole who just made him kiss your severed head, and you don’t know what to do when he drops said besmooched relic of your own decapitation, and you definitely don’t know what to do when he grins like an idiot and gives you a big sweaty bear-hug that makes your knees feel like they’re made of Crocker-brand gelatin products.  
  
You don’t know how you keep yourself from grinning or crying or curling up in the fetal position because holy FUCK you’re not dead you’re all alive and everyone’s here, you’re all okay and you’re better than okay because you’re here with actual living, breathing _people_.  
  
And you don’t know how your voice keeps steady when you finally find the presence of mind to say:  
  
“‘Sup, English?”  
  
Most of all, you know you’ve never felt so good as you feel right now: surrounded by Jane and Roxy and Jake, who were nothing more than text on a screen a few days ago.  
  
You don’t know what’s next, but you know you’re free, and you know that you’re not about to fuck this up.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I just had a lot of Dirk feels that needed writing, and I thought that it would be apropos of his character to write a fic completely in terms of the things that Dirk knows and doesn’t know-- a double-columned list where the story is sorted into “known” and “unknown/variables”, hence the title. Also I feel like Jake is kind of a variable to him, which is really interesting in terms of their couple dynamic in that I think that Jake’s “variable”ness is part of why Dirk was so fascinated by him in the first place.
> 
> I think that for Dirk, the border between “shit I know” and “shit I don’t know” also happens to be the border between “life I’ve been living for the past sixteen years” and “flinging myself into a new universe and hoping that it all works out how I want it to”, which is a compelling distinction for someone who is so focused on planning and known quantities. He’s been in control of almost everything in his immediate environment for years, excluding the conditions that landed him there [namely the batterwitch and that whole shebang]. It must be terrifying and exhilarating and confusing to find yourself in a situation in which you have little to no control after knowing nothing but how to control/manipulate your environment for most of your life.


End file.
